1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to the field of generating application user interfaces. In particular, to a system and method for forwarding an application user interface.
2. Related Art
Efficiently transmitting application content from a source device for display on a destination device is possible using a combination of networking and audio/video compression technologies. Typically, a source device (mobile phone, multimedia player, etc.) creates content (game, movie, user interface, etc.) that is compressed with an encoder and transmitted to the target device (television, receiver, etc.) over a wired or wireless network. The target device decodes the compressed content and reproducing the content on the target device. Compression is utilized because some networking technologies may not be fast enough (e.g. not have sufficient bandwidth) to transport raw uncompressed content.
In many applications the combination of wireless network and compression works well. For example, watching a movie stored on a local source device on a large display connected to a target device. There are a number of potential drawbacks related to the described wireless system including overall end-to-end latency and quality. Both the encoder and decoder introduce latency to lower the bitrate transmitted over the wireless network and the destination device typically introduces buffering to provide a smooth playback experience. The delay may be noticeable. The compression system reduces the transmission throughput requirement by lowering the quality of the content. Complex and fast motion graphics may appear degraded on the destination display in addition to having a noticeable delay.
The compression system may transmit the composited graphics and composited audio associated with the application user interface. It is desirable to have a mechanism for having an application user interface generated on a first platform displayed on a second platform while mitigating issues such as those relating to latency and image quality described above where each application user interface may be independently composited on the second platform.